Climate change and the diversion of rivers for use by cities and agriculture
in arid lands
produces dead and dying seas. Winds blowing over the former seabeds have
produced the dustiest places on earth.

The Dustiest Place on Earth: the
Bodélé Depression in the Sahel

The dustiest place on earth is the Bodélé Depression
in the Sahel. It is the remains of a much larger sea formed when the
Sahel and the Sahara were much wetter thousands of years ago. Read Dustiest
Place on Earth, a 904-KB pdf file, about the Bodélé Depression
in the Sahel, from Nature.

The dustiest place in North America is the Owens Valley.
It is the single
largest source of PM-10 dust in the United States. The story begins with
the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California obtaining
water rights to almost all water in the Owens Valley during the early
20th century to ensure an adequate water supply for the fast growing
Los Angeles. This led to the dessication of Owens Lake.

All that is left of the original Owens Lake in Owens Valley, California
east of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Click on image for a zoom.
From NASA Earth
Observatory.

The demand for water for irrigating crops has led to large-scale
diversion of water from rivers. In central Asia, the Syr Darya and Aru
Darya feed the Aral Sea. The diversion led to perhaps the most notorious
ecological catastrophe of human making. The Aral Sea was once the 4th
largest lake in the world.

Beached. A Soviet decision to divert river
water to cotton farming hastened the Aral Sea's retreat. From Pala
(2005).

Aral
Sea - To save a Vanishing Sea, a Science article by Pala
(2005). A project backed by the World Bank aims
to reverse the Aral Sea's rapid decline, but it could also increase
traffic to an abandoned bioweapons testing site.

The northern portion of the Aral Sea is slowly being brought
back to life. A dike supported by the World Bank and repairs along
the banks of the Syr Darya River have increased the water level dramatically.
An article in Science by Pala
(2007).

Dying Seas—The Salton Sea

Salton
Sea: Battle Over a Dying Sea, a Science article by Kaiser
(1999).
Scientists are at odds over whether to save the Salton Sea, an engineering
mistake that has become a deathtrap for wildlife; the remedy they choose
could influence how environmental debacles are dealt with around the
world.